How vzaar became a 'dolphin'
We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when we discovered last week that vzaar’s eBay trading account had been prevented from selling and buying for 30 days under eBay’s new seller non-performance (SNP) rules.
We sell a few bits and bobs on the account, often for charity, but one of our buyers wasn’t happy. To their credit they got in touch and conversed but, nevertheless, left 1 positive, 1 negative and 2 neutral feedbacks. We’re not angry with the buyer: it’s their right to do this and it’s justified. Equally, we understand what eBay’s trying to do and support efforts to improve the buyer experience. We can also afford to be phlegmatic because we don’t depend on eBay sales for our bread and butter.
And so we’ve become what many eBayers are calling ‘dolphins’: sometimes a dolphin is unintentionally caught in a net that’s trawling for tuna. In an eBay context it refers to an essentially good seller who falls foul of rules to kick out bad sellers. If you make quite a small number of sales in a month, even one dissatisfied buyer can blot your copybook. Tamebay blogged it here.
We hold our hands up: one of our buyers wasn’t happy and left justified feedback. But it’s obvious from the Tamebay debate that lots of sellers are afraid they’ll become a dolphin too. For full time sellers, 30 days without sales could be disastrous.